the history books forgot about us

I'm always posting songs here that are ancient. This is not exactly the place to discover new music, but then again, that's not really my intention. The thing is, sometimes a song has to age a little to have any meaning to me. But ironically enough, not this one.

In this case, it's more a difficulty of sharing this song, or writing anything about it. This song feels to me about perspective. When I first heard about this song, it reminded me of a quote from the movie Before Sunrise:

"You know what's the worst thing about somebody breaking up with you? It's when you remember how little you thought about the people you broke up with and you realize that is how little they're thinking of you. You know, you'd like to think you're both in all this pain but they're just like 'Hey, I'm glad you're gone'."

And then it also brought a little Neruda to mind:

If suddenly
you forget me
do not look for me,
for I shall already have forgotten you.

It's like a prism with all these different facets. Somewhere in there is the truth. Spektor's song is about someone who is reminding someone that she existed, that they existed. Jesse in Before Sunrise knows he's been forgotten, but knows he's done plenty of forgetting in his time. And Neruda makes it seem like simpler math, an eye for an eye. But were that true, Neruda couldn't write this kind of poetry:

love is so short, forgetting is so long

It's interesting, to me, though, that common sense says forget, move on, get over it. When all most people ever want to do is be remembered. And some of us feel compelled to do the remembering.